Louisiana moves to make abortion pills ‘controlled dangerous substances’
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Louisiana could become the first state in the country to categorize mifepristone and misoprostol - the drugs used to induce an abortion - as controlled dangerous substances, threatening incarceration and fines if an individual possesses the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice.
Legislators in Baton Rouge added the provision as a last-minute amendment to a Senate bill that would criminalize an abortion if someone gives a pregnant woman the pills without her consent, a scenario of “coerced criminal abortion” that nearly occurred with one senator’s sister.
A pregnant woman obtaining the two drugs “for her own consumption” would not be at risk of prosecution. But, with the exception of a health-care practitioner, a person helping her get the pills would be.
Louisiana already bans both medication and surgical abortions except to save a patient’s life or because a pregnancy is “medically futile.” Lawmakers just rejected adding exceptions for teenagers under 17 who become pregnant through rape or incest.
The amendment would list mifepristone and misoprostol under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, which regulates depressants, opioids and other drugs that can be highly addictive. It elicited a strong reaction from more than 240 Louisiana doctors, who called it “not scientifically based.”
“Adding a safe, medically indicated drug for miscarriage management … creates the false perception that these are dangerous drugs that require additional regulation,” they wrote in a letter sent last week to the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Thomas Pressly. They noted misoprostol’s other critical uses, including to prevent gastrointestinal ulcers and to aid in labor and delivery.
“Given its historically poor maternal health outcomes, Louisiana should prioritize safe and evidence-based care for pregnant women,” they urged.
The amendment, written with guidance from Louisiana Right to Life, was added after the Senate unanimously passed S.B. 276 in mid-April. The measure is awaiting a final vote in the House before the session ends June 3, with little opposition expected.
“As Senator Pressly has stated, the medical community regularly uses controlled substances in a myriad of medical situations, including emergencies,” said Sarah Zagorski, communications director for the antiabortion organization. “The use of these drugs for legitimate health-care needs will still be available, just like all other controlled substances are still available for legitimate uses.”
The pending language appears to open yet another front in the country’s bitter battle over if and how women can obtain an abortion. Attempts to curtail medication abortions - which now constitute more than half of all abortions in the United States - are part of legislative agendas not just in deep-red Louisiana but in many Republican-controlled statehouses. And in March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought against the Food and Drug Administration by a group of antiabortion doctors seeking to limit access to mifepristone.
Pressly did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but in a statement released by his office, he explained that he was seeking to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs” in Louisiana. He said abortion medication “is frequently abused and is a risk to the health of citizens.” By including the drugs on the controlled-substances list, he added, “we will assist law enforcement in protecting vulnerable women and unborn babies.”
His connection to the issue is in part personal. During public testimony in April before the Senate Judiciary Committee, his sister recounted how her then-husband surreptitiously gave her an abortion drug in 2022 when he brought her breakfast for St. Patrick’s Day. They were separated, but Catherine Pressly Herring said she had learned she was pregnant with their third child and he had agreed to marriage counseling.
After she noticed him serving her “cloudy water,” she said she started having “intense cramping.” Doctors were able to stop the process so that the pregnancy could continue. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail. Under Pressly’s bill, a perpetrator would face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $75,000 fine.
“Through our knowledge of other stories, and from the testimony of local centers in Louisiana caring for women in these situations, the abuse of abortion pills is not isolated to Herring’s situation,” Zagorski said Saturday. “It is very simple for a man to pose as a woman to order these pills online without a prescription, even for a minor, and then to pressure a woman to take the pills.”
While doctors say Herring’s experience is deeply troubling, they remain concerned that her brother’s proposed solution would make mifepristone and misoprostol even harder for Louisianans to get for reasons having nothing to do with abortion. Misoprostol is prescribed for treatment after a miscarriage, for example, and to help stop postpartum hemorrhage, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the state.
“To OB/GYNs, this is very worrisome,” said Neelima Sukhavasi, an OB/GYN in Baton Rouge and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health. “There’s no one that would endorse what happened to his sister. But this is a safe medication that has many important lifesaving uses. It’s not addictive.”
Misoprostol is also taken to soften the cervix during labor, biopsies for cancer and placement of IUDs. Sukhavasi said she is concerned that Pressly wrote the amendment without consulting physicians or enforcement agencies.
Nimra Chowdhry, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, echoed those concerns but in harsher terms. She accused abortion opponents in Louisiana of misrepresenting the safety and efficacy of the two drugs - a manipulation “in pursuit of blocking people from care.”
This ultimately “turns back the clock on modern medicine,” she said.
Abby Ledoux, vice president of communications at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, is worried about the “far-reaching” consequences because of the drugs’ other uses.
There are “real questions,” she said, “about what it would mean in practice to open the controlled-substances list like this, including what aspects of state law legislators think manufacturers would follow, even locally.”
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Graphics:
https://washingtonpost.com/documents/dc7b85b3-1111-4a08-b032-9008fdf7b290.pdf
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